ToT is easily among the hardest normal raids. Really unforgiving for mistakes on quite a couple encounters and tuned for definitely more gear than usual. Furthermore they removed the gradual nerf/buff system and let itemlvl fix it. Add to that lfr being really time consuming I am not terribly astonished that it developed as it did.

They never had a gradual nerf/buff system in any mid expansion raid, ever. So it was not really removed. None of the fights are really a gear check so where do you get from that it was tuned for a higher item level than usual?

Ok, I like the current tier of raiding. I enjoy it being challenging, I want it to stay that way.

Now, I want the current system, in the sense that I get challenging and fun content, to stay in place.

There is no problem with that but you realize that you need the easy accessible content even if it is just to generate recruits for the content you prefer.

Originally Posted by Waterbeetle44

They never had a gradual nerf/buff system in any mid expansion raid, ever. So it was not really removed. None of the fights are really a gear check so where do you get from that it was tuned for a higher item level than usual?

Sure in the case of firelands it wasn't gradual - it was just a flat nerf. The latter is my perception - every raid I previously played seemed way easier in former normal gear.

While I don't necessary disagree with you, a lot of the points you bring up are unsubstantiated claims. OP's examples have their holes too, but I think the numbers do a decent job of illustrating the point that OP is trying to make - raiding is seeing a trend of becoming more difficult...or at least seeing a higher rate of attrition than we've seen in the past.

The question is. Is it really? Did you check the numbers of the previous raids when they were current content?

No matter how you slice it, LFR is the best thing to happen to hardcore raiding in the history of WoW. LFR lets a lot more people see the raids, which means you can justify spending more resources building it. And I'm not talking the ecounter design - that's the easy and cheap part. LFR pays for new models, expansive zones, new spell effects, new ability types (extra action button, wind, etc). Because of LFR it now actually makes financial sense to pour the effort into heavy raiding.

That said, LFR is also a huge drain on the normal raiding community. Most people raid for a mix of reasons, of course, but better gear is one of the biggest reasons to raid. If the only path to better gear is normal raiding, that's what you do. If a new, less demanding path opens up some people will take that instead, and accept the lesser upgrades. Essentially, there were people who didn't really like to raid who had to for gear, and now they're doing something else.

Well, I disagree 100% LFR has hurt the game on so many levels and its not really considered "raiding". LFR lets a lot more people get gear very easily, it is really not about seeing content. I call bullshit on that. That being said, Blizz cannot get rid of it now...its too late and the subs work ethic expectations has changed too much.

I agree with you that LFR is also a huge drain on the normal raiding community

Doubt that. This game specifically always actually had too many players for the type of content it provided. I don't see how you would want to change that.

I would argue the game has always been screwed up in this way, to a greater or lesser extent. In the past, the flow of new players through the game masked the problem. That flow has tapered off, revealing the flaw that's always been there.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

no.....nerfs have been in place in icc...you could turn them off if you wanted but there were nerfs in place all the way through that content. sorry if i won't look at numbers that contain nerfs as it null and voids this whole discussion. sorry if that bursts your ToT is too extreme bubble but its fact. go back and get numbers pre-nerf and you will have a case. but numbers that contain nerf kills are not. Also timeframe...it would have to be the first 2 months of the content as well, not 4 months or 5 months or 6 months. as obviously guilds will kill stuff more the longer its out. these are VERY IMPORTANT NEEDED things to even make this valid imo. otherwise its all trash statistics.....

correct me if im wrong but didnt lich king heroic get killed AFTER the 5% nerf? if that is the case as I think it is...that would mean since H Lei Shen has been killed pre-nerf that ToT would be easier?

from MMO.......
Paragon was the first guild in the world to defeat the Lich King in 25-Heroic mode! The 5% buff was used and it definitely confirms that guilds do not need the 10% version to kill him.

no.....nerfs have been in place in icc...you could turn them off if you wanted but there were nerfs in place all the way through that content. sorry if i won't look at numbers that contain nerfs as it null and voids this whole discussion.

Nerfs make content easier. When it's easier, more people do it. Seems to me that the whole point of this discussion.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

no.....nerfs have been in place in icc...you could turn them off if you wanted but there were nerfs in place all the way through that content. sorry if i won't look at numbers that contain nerfs as it null and voids this whole discussion. sorry if that bursts your ToT is too extreme bubble but its fact. go back and get numbers pre-nerf and you will have a case. but numbers that contain nerf kills are not. Also timeframe...it would have to be the first 2 months of the content as well, not 4 months or 5 months or 6 months. as obviously guilds will kill stuff more the longer its out. these are VERY IMPORTANT NEEDED things to even make this valid imo. otherwise its all trash statistics.....

You mean that we should nerf tot with a stacking debuff, I think.

correct me if im wrong but didnt lich king heroic get killed AFTER the 5% nerf? if that is the case as I think it is...that would mean since H Lei Shen has been killed pre-nerf that ToT would be easier?

yes, lets look at the final bosses on heroic to decide about general normal mode difficulty and it's effect on raider attrition.

"It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."

Nerfs make content easier. When it's easier, more people do it. Seems to me that the whole point of this discussion.

The OP doesn't seem to realize that the reason more people did the last tier of the last 2 expansions is due to the increasing nerf. He seems to think that something has fundamentally changed in the system from then to now.

In fact it has not. Naxx, Ulduar and ToC were left alone, without a stacking increase (though there were, of course, hotfixes) during their tier. T11 was left alone until after Firelands was out.

For the last 2 expansions the only raids to be nerfed by a significant amount during their lifecycle were the final tiers. Why? so people can finish the story. You can't go back and complete ICC with the next tier's gear in the same way you could go back and complete Ulduar with ICC gear. By the next tier you're in a different expansion and it's not the same.

The question is whether or not this is a GOOD thing. I think it is a good thing to have harder normal and heroic modes and an easy LFR. I get the content I want, they get the content they want.

People join guilds to hang out, as a result, instead of solely a way to raid. I think that's a good thing too. I'm in a guild of people I like, and we like to raid. If you don't want to find a new guild to raid, but still want to see the content, well there's LFR, and it's much easier to get into than pugs were in the past.

Its not a matter of "raiding is too hard now". Its a number of factors. And former raiders will have different views as to why its going down hill.

Personally it has nothing to do with how "hard it is". The fights aren't hard, they are tedious. 10 fucking minute fights? They supplemented time for mechanics. Just make the fight take longer, that is hard right? Well sort of, its harder because wiping 8 minutes in for the 5th time makes me not want to do this any more. Wiping 2-3 minutes in 30 times wasn't that bad. Yea, you got sick of watching the same player screw up the same mechanic the same way every time. But it was a quicker reset and go.

There are other reasons I quit raiding outside of my weekly run throughs of LFR but the point is there are a bunch of reasons why raiding has dropped off. Its not simply less people have killed x bosses so its obviously harder. Thats not the case or at least thats not a complete answer.

indeed beetle....they want to include the nerf kills to justify their position on ToT....they refuse to look at the REAL numbers....which prove that in all actuality less percentages cleared ICC in 10 man no nerf than those that have cleared ToT.

The OP doesn't seem to realize that the reason more people did the last tier of the last 2 expansions is due to the increasing nerf. He seems to think that something has fundamentally changed in the system from then to now.

In fact it has not. Naxx, Ulduar and ToC were left alone, without a stacking increase (though there were, of course, hotfixes) during their tier. T11 was left alone until after Firelands was out.

T7 and T9 (Naxx and ToC normal) were easy raid tiers. They came pre-nerfed, you might say.

T8 was actually fairly hard. For some reason -- perhaps because people were brickwalling on it -- Blizzard rushed out patch 3.2 less than four months after 3.1.

For the last 2 expansions the only raids to be nerfed by a significant amount during their lifecycle were the final tiers. Why?

T12 was nerfed 20% before it ended.

I think the experience shows that when raids are hard, fewer people do them. MoP normal mode raids are rather hard, so the normal mode raiding population has crashed. People don't like frustration and failure. This does not require a PhD in game psychology to understand.

The question is whether or not this is a GOOD thing. I think it is a good thing to have harder normal and heroic modes and an easy LFR. I get the content I want, they get the content they want.

I don't think it's a good thing for the game overall, or for the performance of the game as an entertainment product. In fact, I consider the design philosopy leading to harder raids to be obsolete. The great majority of players recognize it and won't play along. I believe the inclusion of difficult raids damages the level of attachment non-hardcore players have to the game, even if they never attempt those raids themselves.

Last edited by Osmeric; 2013-05-30 at 05:06 PM.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

The crash starts at tier 11, prior to the introduction of LFR, and continues into the Firelands.

LFR is not to blame.

This was a very quick first attempt to take a general look at how raiding numbers have moved on, and look for possible explanations as to why (against a plummeting subscriber base). It would be meaningless if most of the commentary didn't concentrate on Mists of Pandaria... Which it does.

Funnily enough, I'm pretty robust about criticism for the sake of criticism.

I never said I blame LFR for this. In fact, IMO, it's quite the opposite, which is why I said I dreaded to see what these numbers would have been were it not for LFR. Just throwing a possible thought process out there:

With LFR: "Holy hell these normal modes are freaking retarded...eff this, I'll just do LFR"
Without LFR: "Holy hell these normal modes are freaking retarded...think I'll go pvp, or do pet battles...meh eff that I'll just quit"